The Saboteur/Hornsby's Crisp Apple Hard Cider

Game: The Saboteur, Pandemic, 2009, PC
Beer: Hornsby's Crisp Apple Hard Cider, 12 fl. oz., 5.5% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 4
Level Reached: 5th mission, 10,000th nazi killed
Level of Intoxication: Buzzed

Game
Pandemic Studios, known and loved for their Star Wars: Battlefront and Destroy All Humans game franchises were recently bought out and given the axe by EA, a game company who is well known and hated for doing things like buying out game studios and then giving them the axe. Fortunately for gamers, before Pandemic became yet another epitaph in the games industry, they managed to produce a final game, this game is called The Saboteur, and it is a superb farewell.

Gameplay
Three word summary: GTA with Nazis. No, I'm really not kidding. I've long held the opinion that Nazis are the videogame equivalent of bacon, adding them makes everything better. While I might have a few stout opponents to that view, particularly those in the Jewish community (They hate pork and Nazis...perhaps there's a hidden connection there?), The Saboteur tallies up one more point on the "Nazis Make Killing Fun" scoreboard. And so it is, you are dropped in a vast gameworld, tasked with killing any and all Nazis you run across, the means by which are hugely varied and insanely satisfying. The game puts a wide assortment of tools in your hands, such as the very common dynamite, a large array of lead propulsion devices, and other toys such as RPGs, grenades, and even mounted equipment such as AA Flak cannons and mortars. You wield these weapons in the playground known as Nazi-occupied Paris, dodging roving patrols, besieging Nazi implements of war, and infiltrating Nazi compounds.

The game places heavy emphasis on stealth and blending into the city, showcasing the ability to assume Nazi disguises, hiding in holes throughout the environs, remaining outside Nazi "suspicion circles" and scaling buildings in order to find better paths of infiltration into guarded outposts. After a piece of Nazi equipment has gone boom or a few more Nazis have gone missing, the player is urged to scoot boots to a position which isn't crawling with angry and inquisitive Nazis, a position which will likely have even more unsuspecting Nazis to do away with. Theoretically, a player could rip and tear all throughout Paris in one long huge burn, killing enemies and destroying equipment without rest, pausing only to trade with one of the game's many black market weapons dealers for supplies. The thought of cutting a destructive swath through a foreign country with the authorities in hot pursuit gives me a warm fuzzy on more than one level, and helps to keep the game fresh and interesting, even when certain other ideas are executed poorly.

One poorly executed facet of the game just so happens to be related to the stealth aspects. The game wants to see you sneak around restricted compounds and other installations, but unfortunately, the best way to determine if you can be seen is by getting seen. There are no vision cones on your map or other indicators to help you smuggle your hapless ass past curiously attentive guard patrols, when an enemy drops out of your line of sight, their marker also drops off your mini map, and when one Nazi sees you they all see you.
Now, I can accept the first two mechanics as being concessions to realism, even if in this context realism sucks and only serves to give the Load Game menu item some exercise, but the latter situation is much harder to swallow. I might not be up on my European history, but I really don't remember reading anything about Nazis having some weird hive-mind ESP, essentially the same kind of ESP that exists in games like Crysis. That being said, with a game that attempts to encourage stealth gameplay as much as Saboteur does, it has a strange way of showing it with the level of difficulty some stealth missions entail. Example: early on in the game, you are instructed to break some resistance members out of a POW camp, the game actually tells you: "Oh, and just to let you know, there's a metric asston of Krauts there, so try to go in quietly." Okay you say to yourself as you drive sloppily to your objective, time to put on the stealth...You get there, try to sneak into the camp, and BAM alarms everywhere. Second try, put on a Nazi uniform, you're invisible! You sneak in, pop the first lock on the cages and suddenly "Nein!!! Ist das nicht ein schnitzelbank!?!?" And I'm again looking at the very pretty and well designed screen that allows me to load my most recent saved game. The stealth inconsistencies notwithstanding, there are a couple other niggles that keep this game from being perfect. Remember somewhere early in this review when I directly compared this game to Grand Theft Auto? That wasn't me being facetious. One of the other major plagues of this game is the driving mechanic. The vehicles in The Saboteur operate exactly as the ones in every GTA do, horrendously. The really terrible part is that since you are, in some capacity in the game, an Irish racecar driver, the game will at certain points require you to take control of a racecar and attempt to pilot it with a measurable degree of precision in the game. The fact that every single car in the game handles like a dogshit-filled chinese takeout box makes enjoying these portions of the game difficult to say the least.

Now, a huge paragraph detailing how hard the game sucks may sound like I hate it, but the opposite couldn't be more true. Because as was the case with Prototype, there's something intrinsically pleasurable about being given a city and then being given free license to indulge in your most violent fantasies within it. Character control is very good, and the ability to ambush Nazis, take their uniforms and infiltrate guarded areas in order to explodify something or killify someone is sublime. The moniker of the game, "The Saboteur" is accurate, since whether in or out of missions, you will routinely find yourself sabotaging enemy vehicles, equipment, and installations, very frequently with dynamite and a zippo, and words cannot describe how cool it feels to sneak up to an occupied Nazi guard tower, flick the lighter, light the fuse and back up to a safe distance to watch your subversive machinations play out, complete with ragdoll physics...Especially with ragdoll physics. Of course, if you dislike dynamite or wish to change it up sometimes, you could always drive a car into a fuel depot and bail out at the last second...in The Saboteur, the choice is yours.
Here is where I highlight another aspect of The Saboteur that bears mentioning, as you work against the Nazi occupation, you'll free portions of the city from Nazi oppression, which not only brings color back into the world, but will actually strengthen the resistance movement in that area, causing passerby to actually come to your aid if you get in a scuffle, or even start fights themselves, it's a game mechanic that is well executed and helps to breathe life into the gameworld. Freed zones have more hiding spots, fewer Nazis, and softer targets, making it easy to establish your dominion over those parts of the city.

Graphics/Sound
Well, might as well address this right out of the gate, The Saboteur has some of the most stylish art direction I've seen in recent memory. One of the most striking parts of the game is the fact that when you're in Nazi controlled areas, everything is black and white, with only striking colors such as the red armbands of Nazis visible. This alone makes the game feel as though it has greater depth and character and helps to stand this game out among the scads of other sandbox/city destruction games available. Another thing worth mentioning is the nudity. Other games have in the past attempted to bring adult situations to games with varying degrees of success, and most times, a game that includes bare breastnoids in the content is almost guaranteeing censure and condemnation. Interesting then that in this context, this game has very nearly been lauded as having no compromise in the artistic vision, and very little news has circulated about the nudity and other sexual situations in this game. It could be that Pandemic has found the loophole that allows games to exploit lewd and lascivious content for monetary gain, or it could be that the industry and its consumers as a whole are maturing, and recognizing that such content can be used successfully to tell a story and enhance a fictional narrative with grit and realism...And no, I'm not going to post a picture "in the interest of full disclosure."
The sounds are well done, explosions are full and punchy, and the screams of Nazis on fire are appropriately satisfying. Some of the guns don't sound quite right for some reason, while others sound just the way one would imagine they should. The accents are pretty good, I couldn't find anything wrong with them other than the fact that sometimes they just sounded too cliched. Car engine sounds all seemed to blend together, whether it was an Italian race car or a flat bed truck. They all had a different sound, sure, but there's still something...recycled about it. One thing I can say about the sound direction, and quite frankly the game as a whole, was that when I heard a German voice yelling, I knew it was for me and I immediately went on high alert.

Story
You are Sean Devlin, an Irish stereotype of near immeasurable proportions. Through a few turns of fate, you get trapped in Nazi-occupied Paris, and, through a few more turns of fate, really, really, really really hate Nazis. God still loves you though, and so gives you an opportunity to strike back at your enemy, all while taking refuge in an upscale titty bar. In the game, you will fill Sean's boots as he wages a personal war against the Nazis in general, and against your foe, Kurt Dierker in particular. Your vendetta will take you all across the streets and cities of Paris, as well as a generous dollop of the French countryside as well. You might even see a smattering of Germany if you promise not to blink.

Of course, what kind of protagonist would you be if you weren't surrounded by espionage, fair-weather friends, spies, hot British chicks who drug you and drag you to abandoned churches in the middle of nowhere (seriously, there wasn't a car to jack for miles, I had to hoof it through the countryside for a half an hour just to find a car), and strained alliances with shady characters? In the course of the game you will encounter all that as well as much more, and by the end of the game, you'll hate everyone just as much as Sean does because apparently in 1940's Paris, unless they're having sex, everyone hates everyone else, even if they're on the same side. The coolest thing in my mind about the story though, is that Sean is an opportunist, in that he's not looking to be a war hero, or even a good guy, he's fighting the Nazis because he wants to make them all dead, plain and simple. At first blush, it may come off as just another revenge story, but when looked at in the larger context of a World War, the plot begins to exhibit a nuance and subtle commentary that's easy to miss.

Beer
Okay, I realize that technically, hard cider is nowhere near the same thing as beer, it's made with different stuff, it tastes different and has different judging criteria for taste and smell, and most devout beer drinkers look at hard cider, wine coolers, and flavored malt beverages as "cheerleader beer." As far as I'm concerned though, it's bubbly, it has alcohol, it gets you twisted, and most importantly, it sits right next to the actual beer in the glass case. Good enough for government work I say. Besides, it's my site, and if I want to do a review with Parcheesi and Goldschlager, Goddamnit, I'll do it. In fact, that's not such a bad idea...

Now, with that out of the way allow me to expound on the virtues of Hornsby's. First of all, it's very sweet, the apple taste comes after the fermented sugar taste but before the alcohol taste. If you've been drinking something such as Michelob Ultra all night and then suddenly switch to this, be prepared for a wake up call. In terms of taste disparity between this and something such as Michelob Ultra, the measured scale would stretch from here to approximately Alpha Centari. Whereas a spartan, hop-and-barley brew would slide right past the tongue, only stopping briefly to light up some bitter buds, Hornsby's sends shock troopers into the deepest parts of the tongue, assaulting with extreme prejudice all buds except for salty, leaving behind in it's wake a confused cavalcade of taste signals rushing to the brain to convey damage reports. Make no mistake, Hornsby's is the napalm of taste. I fear the day when I discover the ICBM of taste. Fortunately, once you stop reeling from the sensation of tasting everything at once, you'll find this is actually a very nice beverage with quite a lot to offer. The label has a picture of a rampaging rhino on it, so you probably won't catch too much flak from your frat brothers, and this thing is bio-engineered to be able to take to the head with reckless abandon. The carbonation in this is such that people used to chugging bubble-fests such as MGD and such will find this stuff as easy to guzzle as plain water.

The smell is rather alcoholic, with a careful balance of the apple notes. It doesn't offend, but rather prepares one for the forthcoming taste experience. Such a pervasive odor does have the distinct drawback of lingering on one's breath for an extended period of time though,and can be smelled from several rooms away, so any attempts to catch a mate with this would surely result in failure, lest of course the prospective individual were also drinking Hornsby's, then everything is copacetic.

The level of intoxication this drink can bestow upon it's victim is surprising bordering on alarming; the sweetness coupled with the amazing chuggability coupled with the 5.5% abv makes this a drink that can quickly take it's imbiber into uncharted waters. To compound matters, this is a sneaky drunk, it doesn't truly hit you until you stand up, whereupon your equilibrium and coordination look at one another and say "screw this, I have better things to do." Definitely not something to drink if you're about to take a shot for the Olympic gold medal on the balance beam.

The Matchup
Well, very much in line with Nazis and bacon, The Saboteur shares a few unlikely commonalities with Hornsby's, one of which being that a very serious product exists under the candy-flavored surface. Barring a few missteps in execution, both the game and beer in this instance have a great deal to offer, and people willing to see either through will find just rewards waiting for them.

Cheers/Game on.